§ Statement of Purpose

The View from 1776 presents a framework to understand present-day issues from the viewpoint of the colonists who fought for American independence in 1776 and wrote the Constitution in 1787. Knowing and preserving those understandings, what might be called the unwritten constitution of our nation, is vital to preserving constitutional government. Without them, the bare words of the Constitution are just a Rorschach ink-blot that politicians, educators, and judges can interpret to mean anything they wish.

"We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." John Adams, to the Officers of the First Brigade, Third Division, Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1798.

§ Syndicate

The View From 1776

2nd Amendment Original Intent

Read Walter Williams’s article contrasting the views of our founding generation and today’s liberal-progressives, who are intent upon subjugating citizens to a planned, socialistic political state.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/07 at 05:04 PM

Unfortunately, the Constitution, according to Chief Justice Roberts, might allow a $3,000 a year "tax" on every privately owned gun--a charge that could be collected by the IRS armed with the auditing authority to search your home?

The question in Walter William's article appears to be whether the government has the authority to regulate the possession of guns. Since automatic weapons are already illegal (and there are many other gun laws on the books) the legality of regulating possession of guns has really already been settled.

The current question is whether certain kinds of weapons should be included in the current restrictions to help reduce the threat to the public.

As a society, we do not permit private citizens to own and use hand grenades, Tommy guns, Uzis, RPGs, heat-seeking shoulder-fired missiles, Bazookas, and a host of other items that have been determined to be too likely to allow mayhem to result and beyond the reach of 2nd amendment protections.

In the light of the New Town children's massacre, we need to ask ourselves whether semi automatic weapons, cop killer bullets, and large capacity ammo clips should also fall into that category.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/08 at 11:46 AM

Mr. Jay, I agree that the Newtown massacre calls for everyone's sympathy. But sentiment is a poor substitute for regulation.

Once again, I challenge you to conceive a regulation or web of regulations that could have prevented the Newtown barrage.

We really are dealing with a matter of individual and national character. And character is formed by religion and the resulting societal paradigm of "doing the right thing." Plato and Aristotle viewed it as lawgivers focusing upon the transcendental to understand true justice and then crafting laws that would orient people's lives and the education of their children toward moral conduct and away from the sort of pragmatic philosophy (if a self-centered action gets what you want it is valid) advocated by liberal-progressives since the days of John Dewey.

What had been taking place in Athens as Plato and Aristotle looked back and endeavored to understand the destruction of their city state is almost exactly paralleled in the moral degradation we in the United States have endured for the past forty years.

Since the 1960s, however, the lunatic fringe of liberal-progressivism (the student activists) have gradually won society to their views, as expressed by Obama's friends and advisors, Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn. They and their Weatherman colleagues advocated abandoning the paradigm of family loyalty, plumping for loyalty only to the commune; they demanded that, if one did not already have a pistol, he had to acquire one, the aim being to "bring the war home and kill the pigs." Newtown is the fruit of liberal-progressive, self-centered hedonism and its effort to push everyone into the socialist cesspool.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/08 at 01:46 PM

Mr. Brewton,

I suspect that very few would agree that your thesis that the murder of children in New Town was the inevitable result of excess liberalism.

Your challenge to come up with a regulation that would have prevented the shootings is a clever dodge, but your logic is faulty. The same question could be asked about a horrendous automobile faltality: "Come up with a regulation to prevent speeding!"

Speed limits do not, of course, "prevent" people from speeding, but I trust you would not claim that speed limits should be abolished.

Outlawing semi automatic weapons would be a good start in an effort to a reduction in massacre incidents. Can I guarantee that there would be no further shootings? No. But by the same logic you cannot guarantee me that such a law would completely ineffective in reducing such events.

If you are claiming that gun laws do no good in cutting down on gun violence, why then would it not make sense to allow machine guns and hand grenades to be sold in Walmart?

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/08 at 03:15 PM

Jay--You conflate machine guns and semi-automatic weapons, and the host of guns that can fire more than "single shots." I don't know much about them all, but we'll need Aristotle back to make the complex distinction required along that slippery slope! And at the rate we're going, hand grenades may become popular! Greene's Law: Weapons will proliferate in direct proportion to the expanding threat of an overbearing government.

I agree with Tom, and John Adams, that "We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

Unfortunately, we no longer have a preponderance of such people. Clearly, our current violent malaise is the fault of atheists, Wall Street speculators, Joe Corzine, Goldman Sachs, Tim Geithner, and all the similary dishonest greedy characters who form America's new elite. Trickle down economics has been criticized, but the trickle down immorality from our cultural elites and financial puppeteers, aided and abetted by the demogogic offers of a life living of the Mama government tit, has corrupted the citizenry. The end is near -- and gun control will not help!

The constitution, which we all hold dear, is very clear about the use of weapons to attempt an overthrow of our duly elected government. It is called "treason."

Using the excuse that we all need to keep a stash of automatic weapons in case the need for Treason (in our opinion) arises is reprehensible and indefensible. I am sure you do not mean that.

Our forefathers pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to establish a system where governmental change is realized through the ballot box, not via an armed coup d'etat as happens in third world tin pot dictatorships.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/09 at 10:21 AM

So, Jay, that would mean Bill Ayers, and all his fellow Weathermen, should have been promptly hung by the neck till dead. We are in agreement!

Yes, we are in agreement that had Bill Ayers been arrested, tried, and found guilty of Treason, he should have been hung by the neck until dead.

Fortunately (for Ayers), the FBI dropped all charges against him and he was not arrested.

And also fortunate for Mr. Ayers (and for the country), he gave up his youthful firebrand ways and became a respected (by many) professor at an illustrious institution of higher learning. He is now retired.

I do not endorse Ayers or his early activities, but I do believe in redemption.

Remember that there are many on the right side of the ledger with sordid pasts who are now lifted up as beacons of conservative wisdom (Oliver North, Gordon Liddy, Jack Abramoff, Michael Deaver, and Dick Morris, among others) so there should be room for forgiveness on all sides.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/09 at 12:09 PM

What sordid things are in dick morris' past? He appears so wholesome and sweet, all smiles, on Fox, et al. Course, he did work for Clinton who was certainly a Master of sordidness--is that it?

Mr. Jay, with your point about the impossibility of regulation to prevent speeding, you have made the case I've advocated all along. No humanly conceivable set of regulations will prevent such random acts of barbarity as the Newtown massacre. For both Newtown sorts of violence and for speeding the law exists to punish the perpetrator as justice for the victims and for society as a whole.

With respect to your point that:

"And also fortunate for Mr. Ayers (and for the country), he gave up his youthful firebrand ways and became a respected (by many) professor at an illustrious institution of higher learning. He is now retired."

read what the New York Times reported, ironically on 9/11/01:

Life With the Weathermen: No Regrets for a Love of Explosives
By DINITIA SMITH

"I don't regret setting bombs," Bill Ayers said. "I feel we didn't do enough." Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago…

Now he has written a book, "Fugitive Days" (Beacon Press, September). Mr. Ayers, who is 56, calls it a memoir, somewhat coyly perhaps, since he also says some of it is fiction. He writes that he participated in the bombings of New York City Police Headquarters in 1970, of the Capitol building in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972. But Mr. Ayers also seems to want to have it both ways, taking responsibility for daring acts in his youth, then deflecting it...

In his book Mr. Ayers describes the Weathermen descending into a "whirlpool of violence."

"Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon," he writes. But then comes a disclaimer: "Even though I didn't actually bomb the Pentagon — we bombed it, in the sense that Weathermen organized it and claimed it." He goes on to provide details about the manufacture of the bomb and how a woman he calls Anna placed the bomb in a restroom. No one was killed or injured, though damage was extensive.

Between 1970 and 1974 the Weathermen took responsibility for 12 bombings, Mr. Ayers writes, and also helped spring Timothy Leary (sentenced on marijuana charges) from jail.

This is the beast that Mr. Obama was proud to serve with on the board of an organization devoted to subverting the public education system in the name of socialism.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 01/09 at 01:30 PM